For those of you following along on Twitter or Facebook, my guest and I have spent the morning in the “New” Indianapolis Airpot. After wandering around the place and listening to a surprising number of dogs bark at each other, we decided to eat at Wolfgang Puck’s “Express.”
Puck grew up cooking with his mother, a part-time pastry chef. After training as an apprentice to Raymond Thuilier at L’Oustau de Baumaniere in Provence, he moved onto the Hotel de Paris in Monaco and then to Maxim’s Paris. Puck came to the United States in 1973. After two years at La Tour in Indianapolis, Puck moved to Los Angeles to become chef and part owner at Ma Maison restaurant.
In 1981 Puck shot to fame following the publication of his first cookbook, Modern French Cooking for the American Kitchen. Puck then opened his signature restaurant, Spago, in Los Angeles. His success with Spago allowed him to launch the Wolfgang Puck Companies, including Wolfgang Puck Fine Dining Group, Wolfgang Puck Worldwide, Inc. and Wolfgang Puck Catering. The Wolfgang Puck Companies include 15 fine dining restaurants, premium catering services, more than 80 Wolfgang Puck Express operations, and kitchen and food merchandise, including cookbooks and canned foods.
My guest and I ate at one of Puck’s Express establishments. The décor is fairly modern: bamboo tables; recessed white lighting; a gas-fired, fake-wood pizza oven; and soft, earthy paint on the walls. The service was decent for an airport, no one yelled at us for daring to seek out food. However, we quickly came to regret the food we ordered.
Both my guest and I fell jumped for the turkey avocado club sandwich. The name suggested the right amount of good-cholesterol (avocado) and protein (turkey) in a hard to screw-up package. However, the sandwich should have been named Mayo and Turkey on Bread. The turkey looked as though it had been freshly delivered from Costco. The rest of the sandwich dripped with mayonnaise and oozed with salt. The copious bread, made soggy with the generous surviving of mayonnaise, did nothing to offset the dish’s salty character. The avocado was so drenched in mayonnaise that I am almost certain it had more trans-fat than a Big-Mac.
While dinning, I asked my guest why would an accomplished chef like Wolfgang Puck dilute his reputation by attaching their name to a bunch of inferior lunch counters. Her response summed up our lunch, “He’s probably making so much money he doesn’t care what people think.”
Normal Score 2.5 out of 5, Special Airport Score: 4 out of 5.
Do NOT go and bash the Costco, ya’ hear? You can bash the Puck, but not the Costco! As a father of twins, I must defend any individual/corporation/entity/purveyor of disposable globalism who can make super-cheap diapers that don’t blow out, AND simultaneously supply me with 3 lbs of good coffee to satiate my insomnia while changing said twins any hour of any day… they get a pass on any product, ever. And their turkey is not as bad as Puck’s
But I now know that Wolfgang started his American Crusade in Indy. What if we were all eating Hoosier-Hybrid-Fusion food these days rather than Turkey & Avocado California Fusion? What if he never emigrated to the Golden State? What would your lunch have looked like then? I mean sure, he botched the California. Can you imagine if he never left Montgomery County? It might have been something like dehydrogenated soybean spread on GM sheet metal? with Sprouts? AND extra mayo!
By: Benny on March 25, 2009
at 3:59 am